Saturday, November 28, 2009

UKIP Goes Corsican

The United Kingdom Independence Party has registered a certain annoyance at the rejection by Daveybloke's Cuddly Conservatives of their proposal for an electoral deal, and have sworn vengeance in the event of a hung parliament; which shows much the same irresistible comic timing as Heinrich Himmler displayed in April 1945 when he attempted to forge an anti-Soviet alliance with the Americans. The domestic policy of Daveybloke's Cuddly Conservatives may be variously worn-out, crude, weird and nonexistent; their foreign policy may be treading a fine and subtle line between Churchillian blimpishness and Rothermerean fascism; they can make what proposals they like about privatising Whitehall, politicising the police, chipping away at the health service and cutting the BBC down to something the Daily Mail might be able to kick a bit harder without knocking the polish off its hobnailed boots; it all matters about as much as the party election broadcast with which, ten days ago, the Glorious Successor contrived to emphasise yet further the futility of the House of Windsor. Daveybloke's Minister for Lurching to the Right of Silvio Berlusconi stated that the Conservatives "don't make policy on the basis of secret deals with other parties"; such shady business is entirely futile when the likes of Oleg Deripaska and Michal Kaminski are awaiting the fraternal embrace. The two main parties in our mother of democracies - so seedily similar in politics, in temperament and in the friends they choose - are also alike in this: that neither will suffer in the least for making promises they do not intend to keep, so long as those promises are made to the electorate and not to anyone who actually makes a difference. In our mother of democracies, where the attainment of a vast parliamentary majority is largely a matter of buying a handful of marginal constituencies and gaining the support of Rupert Murdoch, to plan for a hung parliament is virtually to declare oneself Napoleon.